These are my links for January 5th through January 15th:

• 25 Years Of Graphics History: A Farewell To ATI, In Pictures –
• Epoch Converter – Unix Timestamp Converter –
• The Naked Coder | Sarah White Consulting –
• Cheaper Than Dirt – America’s Ultimate Shooting Sports Discounter –
• TF2 Launch Options List – Steam Users’ Forums –
• LIRC – Linux Infrared Remote Control –
• Partial solar eclipse and transit of the Space Station from Oman –
• cRPG Guide, Read if new to cRPG – www.c-rpg.net –
• cRPG & Strategus forum on TaleWorlds –
• TaleWorlds –
• cRPG Mod – Mount and Blade –
• Ultra-Mini Nano USB 2.0 802.11n 150Mbps Wifi/WLAN Wireless Network Adapter –

These are my links for December 23rd through January 4th:

• Best Buy Masters Computer Science & Information Technology | Ratings & Rankings | GetEducated.com –
• CSU CS Online Masters Degree –
• Portalarium – Game Developer in Austin (Richard Garriott has joined this team)
• Car2Go Sweeps Austin Off Its Wheels – Car2Go to hopefully expand its area, and definitely expand its fleet with new cars
• bunnie’s blog –
• TF2 Backpack Examiner – Blueprints –
• Musican killed in home burglary attempt, authorities say –
• James Jean | Home –
• Chumby Spare Parts at Sparkfun –
• The animal world has its junkies too – Animals that get high
• MakerBot Industries – Robots That Make Things. –
• chumby sphere forum –
• Chumby hacker board beta – ChumbyWiki –
• chumby hacker board wiki –
• Texas State History IMAX Theatre –

http://www.minecraft.net/

A game where you can build anything out of an array of elements… anything, rollercoasters, castles, lava moats, etc. It’s like a world building game, but, every night it gets taken over by zombies and you must survive.

Honestly, it’s a hard game to describe, it has elements of Dwarf Fortress, zombie games, super mario, portal, legos… and many of it’s own unique ideas.

The TF2 dev team seems to be enraptured with it:

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=4130&p=1

And, it is pretty fun. I set up a server, and you can join it here:

http://www.minecraft.net/play.jsp?server=bac3b007f5dd5ab5caf7c20f4c1a5ec9

(or you can find it in the list of servers here, named CoFR Minecraft Server: http://www.minecraft.net/servers.jsp )

It is browser based, so no install needed. If you wish to be admin on the server, send me your registered playername and I will add you (if I know you, that is).
If you purchase the game you can play the alpha versions, which have all the new features, but the server is running classic version, which should be free to play.

This is so wrong, but oh so right.

• TF2 Wiki »
• Fawnt » fonts… web2.0 stylee
• WordPress Super Cache » updated chaching for WordPress, supposedly plays much nicer with plugins.
• Steampunk Keyboard Mod »
• GlassBooth » Find out which candidate most closely coincides with your views.
• Human Body in a Vacuum » How would the unprotected human body react to the vacuum of outer space?

For those of you who already pre-ordered the Orange Box, Valve has unlocked the TF2 beta. So get thee to the servers!

Well, it looks like the release of Team Fortress 2 after being initially announced in 1997, is upon us. I am pre-loading as we speak, and the beta release will be on Monday. It looks to be a hell of a game, and a worthy successor to the original mod.

In retrospect, I think fondly on my most favorite Quake mod and what it has become today. And this video will show what most of you never experienced in the glory of the original Team Fortress. (Please please do not say that you thought TFC was the first Team Fortress!)

Team Fortress 2. Used to be the butt pocket joke for whenever a game took forever to be released. Now it is tantalizingly redone and looking better than ever. They did a few films before where the classes spoke about themselves, and now the soldier gets his turn. I never thought a cartoony game would make me think “amazing graphics” again, but this one does.

The dream pack of Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal has a new confirmed release date: October 9, 2007. Of course, we all know Valve’s track record with release dates, including these titles. And c’mon, TF2 was on the Vaporware list for years!

But anyways, this is the official word Shacknews wrangled out of them.

Valve’s Doug Lombardi says: Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is now delayed to summer of 2007.

It should have sent off bells and flew all sorts of red flags when they announced TF2 would be simultaneously released with HL2:E2. But no! All us gluttons for punishment just cheered, thinking our almost decade long wait was over! What fools we let ourselves be!

So, I guess this is the “episodic content makes shorter release schedules” that Valve was talking about. Oh, and what happened to Steam Friends again? Nevermind.

Ok, a lot better. A new video was leaked/released from GC 06.

While not exactly the same spirit as the original game (and no, the original is not TFC), this one has an awesome “The Incredibles” look to it, and the quirky comic fun along with it.

I know the video is heavily scripted, but holy crap it looks like fun!

Especially gotta love the rocket jumping dance number at the end.

Alot of you (by alot, I mean all 2 of you) readers may be unfamiliar with my relationship with Team Fortress.

I am a Mod-Man. I love buying games, not just for the game content, but for their potential to be molded into something far greater in the hands of pocket developers. I have installed and tweaked mods since the text adventure heydays. Back when they were usually referred to as hacks.

Most mods were pretty minor addons until the advent of the game Doom. With Doom we witnessed the birth and quick adolescence of the Total Conversion type of mod. There were TC mods that turned Doom into the Simpsons, some that turned it into an Evil Dead ripoff, and some that turned it into Star Wars. I could not get enough of these things, the possibilities seemed endless to me.

Quake was released and was almost completely 3D rendered. Now mod makers could go nuts. There was an explosion of mods for Quake, and mod superstars were born. The first mod I saw played almost as much as regular Quake multiplayer was 3wave CTF (Capture the Flag). This was a solid multiplayer game all on its own.

But then came Team Fortress. The multiplayer in Quake had been improved with prediction technology into something called Quakeworld. Team Fortress took full advantage of QW by adding all kinds of weapons and classes to use them. Classes were unheard of outside of RPG games at the time. It was an explosion, TF servers popped up like mad and still I would have to fight and wait for free spots to open up. I played all the classes, rocket jumping like crazy with the soldier, patient supreme twitchiness with the sniper, and all-out confusion and mayhem with the Heavy Weapons guy. I got so competitive that I joined several different groups and played in LAN and online competitions. This went on for a few years and stole many hours away from college homework. It almost made me ignore Quake 2 when it was released.

Time passed and the dawn of the MMORPG pulled me in and I slowed down on FPS playing. That is until Half-Life and Counterstrike (a mod that dwarfed even TF in popularity). But I always (and still) have a spot for Quakeworld on my hard drive so I can play a few rounds of TF from time to time.

Team Fortress 2 was planned before those two young developers were scooped up by Valve. Valve officially announced development on it after that, and released a small mod to their Half-Life engine to showcase some of the technology they would use in Team Fortress 2. This mod was called Team Fortress Classic. It sprouted its own cult following, but never was quite as popular as the original. I thought it was pretty looking, but the gameplay was a bit too wimpy for me.

After a year or so, some screenshots were released. They showed an ultra-realistic (at the time) combat system with modern weapons and soldiers fighting in squad combat. Sound familiar? Yeah it’s been done already, several times. If development didn’t take 7+ years on this thing, they would have beat everyone to the market with this by years, and BattleField 2 would have never existed.

Now, Valve has yet again made an announcement (that sounds all to familiar to Duke Nukem Forever fans) that Team Fortress 2 will be released with Half-Life 2: Episode 2. It will be squad based and very similar to TFC. It will also feature cel-shaded graphics. It looks very nice, actually, and should be a blast to play. Which I definitely will, if it comes out. I’m just not holding my breath anymore.

Wired has revealed their top ten Vaporware projects of 2002. Not just software is mentioned, also some previously promised technology.

My number 1 choice in vaporware, Team Fortress 2, made it to Number 3 on the list….. and Number 1 is the aging Duke Nukem Forever…. do we even remember what Duke looks like anymore?

Oooh, also in the Popular Science I just got is an article about game mods. Game mods are one of the best things that ever happened to gaming. I think of the games I played the most of, and why I did, and it’s because of mods. I played Doom, QuakeI II and III, and Halflife to death because of the mods released for them…. and the slight mods I wrote myself.

It’s a good article, mostly geared towards non-gamers… but they do little mini-interviews with alot of game devs and past modders. this includes John Cook and Robin Sewell (who also have a photo). Anyone playing mods today should know that these are the fathers (not grandfathers though, game mods go back to the 70′s) of modding. While not old, they made the most popular mod of its time (and combined with its renamed version in Halflife, it could be the most popular of all time. Rivalled only by Counter-strike). I’m talking about Team Fortress, a mod that swept me and thousands of gamers off their feet. Combined with the unofficial-official Quake netcode mod called Quakeworld, this game was the absolute free-time killer. In the article it states that they are still working on their 6 year progress on developing TF2.

I thought I had lost all hope for TF2, in fact I had almost forgotten about its existence altogether. But when I read the little blurb about them still chugging away at it…. well thats the first official word in at least a year that it’s still in progress. I just hope hope HOPE it doesn’t turn out to be another Daikatana.